This invention relates to the treatment of the eyes of animals and, more particularly, to a method of administering a ocular treating agent and product therefor.
The ocular lens proteins have for many years been classified into the water soluble fractions and the water insoluble fractions. It is generally accepted that the newborn lens consists almost entirely of water soluble proteins and that as the lens matures and grows older, there is a slow progressive accumulation of the water insoluble protein fraction with a corresponding relative decrease in the total concentration of water soluble proteins. In the newborn rat and human lens, the soluble proteins account for more than 95% of the total protein fraction of the lens, but as the lens ages there is a progressive increase in the relative concentration of insoluble protein until it reaches a level of over 50% in the old rat lens and approximately 40% in the agend human lens.
There is also a correlation between the increase in the level of water insoluble lens protein and the development of presbyopia in the human lens. Presbyopia is associated with an increase in the size of the central core of the lens, the development of the so-called nuclear sclerosis. Nuclear sclerosis can proceed at various rates and in some people is progresses to the formation of nuclear cataracts. The human lens also develops a yellow color of increasing intensity as it ages with the extreme being the advanced brown or black nuclear cataracts.